2017-06-13 05:00
The annual Cherokee Gourd Artists Gathering just convened last weekend in Cherokee, NC. Gourd design today mainly encompasses the arts and crafts world of vases, pots, and plates, but it has… Read More
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Appalachian History Blog
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Folktales, anecdotes and quotes drawn from Appalachia. Emphasis on the Depression era.
2017-06-12 05:00
“In the courthouse yard a great congregation of Sparrows was rioting over scraps of bread and cake crumbs strewed round the benches by the afternoon concourse of babies and colored nur… Read More
2017-06-09 05:00
The McPhail Angus Farm, in the vicinity of Seneca, SC, has been a locally significant farm for more than one hundred years. The farm illustrates twentieth century developments in agriculture… Read More
2017-06-08 05:00
It’s June, and what better place to hold a June wedding than next to a roller coaster? Chester, WV in the early 20th century didn’t have 6 amusement parks to choose from, the way… Read More
2017-06-07 05:00
By the end of his long career, John Paul Riddle (1901-1989) had received the British Empire award and been inducted into the Kentucky Aviation Hall of Fame and the Florida Aviation Historica… Read More
2017-06-06 05:00
It was the centerpiece of the Montreal Expo of 1967: Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome, a vaulted structure made of lightweight materials that form interlocking polygons.
Nineteen yea… Read More
2017-06-05 05:00
“Though downtown Cumberland has the appearance of an industrial city, there are unusual numbers of country people on the streets, since this is the metropolis of a very large rural are… Read More
2017-06-02 05:00
The Gassaway Mansion in Greenville, SC is still the largest house in the Upstate at 22,000 square feet.
Here’s a profile of its owners, Walter & Minnie Gassaway, taken from … Read More
2017-06-01 05:00
In the summer of 1945, one white executive quietly, secretly, plotted an assault on baseball’s systematic practice of racial discrimination. This executive had a conscience. He knew th… Read More
2017-05-31 05:00
May 31, 1898
Yesterday morning, Monday, I left Hyden to come to this neighborhood to see about getting permission to furnish a teacher for this school district. There are 109 scholars in the… Read More
2017-05-30 05:00
Our community derived its name from a medicinal plant known as Gin Seng. At one time it grew here in abundance. There is still some scattered plants to be found, and a few old timers still h… Read More
2017-05-26 05:00
It was Ohio’s longest-lived narrow gauge railroad.
Monroe County’s rugged terrain hindered commerce and communication during the 1800s. In the early 1870s Woodsfield businessmen… Read More
2017-05-25 05:00
I am an average woman of the United States, a married women with two children and an income of—well, I’m not quite sure what it is, but I know it is not enough to live on as we o… Read More
2017-05-24 05:00
New Straitsville, OH was considered the Bootleg Capital of Ohio during the Depression. Its population of enterprising ex-coalminers concealed dozens of illegal moonshine stills in the area&r&hell…Read More
2017-05-23 05:00
State’s evidence portion of ‘Beck vs. State of Georgia,’ before Judge Estes, Rabun Superior Court, September Term 1885
In this partial court transcript, Eugene W. Beck is i… Read More
2017-05-22 05:00
Louis Bryant and Justus Stearns needed each other, and it’s surely no accident that their worlds finally intersected. Bryant, a bright young mining engineer, had moved into what is tod… Read More
2017-05-19 05:00
In American culture, if you can’t prove you’re 100% white or ‘pass’ for such, you get lumped into the minority by default. This is a cultural bias the Chestnut… Read More
2017-05-18 05:00
“The clouds were blowing away from a densely instarred sky; the moon was hardly more than a crescent and dipping low in the west, but he could see the sombre outline of the opposite mo… Read More
2017-05-17 05:00
In 1170 A.D., a certain Welsh prince, Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd, sailed away from his homeland, which was filled with war and strife and battles between his brothers. Yearning to be away from t… Read More
2017-05-16 05:00
Relatives of the gone-away families often visited if they owned a car or could get a ride with someone who did have one. Susan’s son Henry Hampton (by a former marriage) and wife Mint… Read More
2017-05-15 05:00
In 1879, just 3 years after Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated the telephone, the Behrens brothers established West Viriginia’s first telephone line, connecting two of their groc… Read More
2017-05-12 05:00
As a ballplayer nothing about Earle Bryan Combs was commonplace except his throwing arm; that seemed ordinary only because he shared the Yankee outfield with Bob Meusel and Babe Ruth, both e… Read More
2017-05-11 05:00
Calhoun, Ga. 1934. Mrs. Ralph Haney poses for a photograph in her kimono. The peacock design was made of chenille.
Imagine: you’ve piled the family into the car and are driving south f… Read More
2017-05-10 05:00
“My parents farmed. Well, it’s a good life, but it’s a hard life. They raised cattle, sheep, and hogs for a living. [Their farm] had a lot of…… It wasn’… Read More
2017-05-09 05:00
The following article, titled ‘Grafton, Northern W. Va. Proud Of Mother’s Day Connection — Historian Relates Interesting Data About First Observance,’ by E. E. Meredi… Read More
2017-05-08 05:00
“Tarnation!” reads the title at the bottom of the Aug 1922 National Sportsman cover.
“What in tarnation?” is one of a wide variety of euphemistic expressions of surpr… Read More
2017-05-05 05:00
“From the year 1830 to 1840, though embracing a period of great financial distress, yet was included a period of great improvement in [Huntsville, AL] and vicinity.
Madison County, AL… Read More
2017-05-04 05:00
Stewart A. Cody worked as the Jackson County, WV County Agent in the early 1900s. The West Virginia Historical Photograph Collection possesses 36 images which were pulled from a photo album… Read More
2017-05-03 05:00
Buffalo Ridge Baptist Church, originally located eight miles north of Jonesborough, has been accepted by historians as the first organized church body in Tennessee territory. Tidence Lane mo… Read More
2017-05-02 05:00
“A few miles from Seneca, S. C. on the Blue Ridge Railroad there was a station called Perryville; now only a few rocks remain on the south side of the track to mark the spot. There was… Read More
2017-05-01 05:00
Long before the well-endowed Hollywood starlet of the 1950’s, there was a Dagmar car, built from 1922-1926 in Hagerstown, MD by the M. P. Möller Motor Car Company. This luxury sed… Read More
2017-04-28 05:00
James Henry Neel Reed, known as Henry Reed, was born on April 28, 1884, in Monroe County, WV, a rural county lying along the Virginia border in the Appalachian Mountains of southeaster… Read More
2017-04-27 05:00
Coin collectors today consider the hobo nickel a numismatic treasure, a tribute to long- forgotten folk artists who often literally carved for their supper. The Buffalo nickel debuted in 191… Read More
2017-04-26 05:00
“[After the end of the Spanish American War] Mt. Savage resumed its gay pleasures, which led to many courtships. There was nothing better to further this cause than a long bicycle ride… Read More
2017-04-25 05:00
Excerpt from “Ninety Pounds of Fight,’ by Tom Wallace, Nature Magazine, Feb. 1942
Because of politics Kentucky’s anti-steel-trap law, passed nearly four years ago, hangs in… Read More
2017-04-24 05:00
MIMI CONWAY:
I think we’re talking about when you were in Pulaski County [KY], and you were talking about how it was the year that you learned the most in your life. Did you take notes… Read More
2017-04-21 05:00
West Virginia entrepreneur Donald F. Duncan (1892-1971) had never heard of the yo-yo until 1928, when he encountered Pedro Flores on a business trip to California.
Earlier that same decade… Read More
2017-04-20 05:00
The Southwest Times
“serving Southwest Virginia since 1906”Friday, April 20, 1928
F. A. Seagle was called to Marion today in connection with the undertaking department of Seagle… Read More
2017-04-19 05:00
Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave is not only the largest known cave in the world; it has the distinction of being the oldest touring cave. Formal guided tours were started here in 1816. It rema… Read More
2017-04-18 05:00
“Religious leaders have always had a very powerful influence in Wales,” says Alan Conway in The Welsh in America: Letters from Immigrants. “In the early years of the ninete… Read More
2017-04-17 05:00
In 1924, when I was 16 years old, I started workin’ at the Appalachian Mill as a cone winder operator. Now on that machine, that was a long machine, it had about 50 spindles on it and… Read More
2017-04-14 10:33
The post Happy Easter! appeared first on Appalachian History.
You Might Also Like:Happy Easter! Read More
2017-04-13 05:00
Please welcome guest author Greg B. Miller of Chattanooga, TN. “My great grandmother was a Walden of Walden’s Ridge,” he says. “I was moving an old chest of drawers f… Read More
2017-04-12 05:00
The most serious difficulty that arose over the stateline issue, and one which threatened bloodshed, was what has been termed the “The Water-Works War.” In April, 1889, the Brist… Read More
2017-04-11 05:00
‘Hickory chickens,’ or ‘dry land fish,’ don’t have anything to do with chicken, fish or hickory. They are morel mushrooms and they’re in season right abou… Read More
2017-04-10 05:00
At Easter, kids would hide eggs. Go around to hen nests and get a egg or two every day and hide them so you’d have some for Easter. Well, Papa had about twelve or fourteen old Rhode I… Read More
2017-04-07 05:00
By January 1, 1941, Harlan and Bell Counties were 95 per cent organized. The only nasty non-union outpost was the Fork Ridge mine just across the Kentucky line in Tennessee, a short distance… Read More
2017-04-06 05:00
FDR’s government established several agencies to give relief to unemployed artists during the Depression. The Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture (later known… Read More
2017-04-05 05:00
“Which of you shall we say doth love us most?” asks King Lear of his three daughters at the opening of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Shakespeare often re-interpreted well known ta… Read More
2017-04-04 05:00
“Mother was born April 4, 1919, Zelma Zane Bennett. She was all of two pounds and fit very nicely into a cigar box. She was the daughter of Fred and Mollie (Perry) Bennett who lived in… Read More
2017-04-03 05:40
Please welcome guest author Jim Rada. Rada is an award-winning writer best known for his history and historical books. He lives in Gettysburg, PA, where he works as a freelance writer. Rada… Read More
2017-03-31 05:00
Great numbers of Hungarian immigrants came to the United States around the turn of the century. The wave of immigration from 1880 to about 1915 was called the ‘Great Economic Immigrati… Read More
2017-03-30 05:00
The following are daily notes Great Great Grandfather James Calloway Campbell wrote to his children near the end of his life. The spelling of words is sometimes peculiarly his, but oft… Read More
2017-03-29 05:00
North Carolina is home to at least 48 species of salamanders, and the mountain counties are the most productive with at least 35 species. And among those 35 species is the hellbender (Crypto… Read More
2017-03-28 05:00
Parcel post was one year old. The Pennsylvania Railroad ran six crack trains daily, right through the middle of town, headed for St. Louis or New York, not counting a dozen locals to Pittsbu… Read More
2017-03-27 09:00
When asked what brought him to this community, Joe Raines said the Lord had sent him here as a pest on the Maynors and Williames for their meanness. That is the only reason Joe ever gave for… Read More
2017-03-24 05:00
If you’re at all familiar with the work of Studs Terkel, you’ll recognize a kindred spirit in the work of author Michael Abraham. Terkel was world renowned for his ability to dra… Read More
2017-03-23 05:00
Following is a family history written in 1985 by Ethel (Barrows) Shilling, of Washington County, OH. Grand Ma & Grand Pa Seevers were: Mary A. Severs (1821-1909) & Samuel Severs (180… Read More
2017-03-22 05:00
By the mid 1920s Appalachia, land of farms and farmers, had been crisscrossed by railroad tracks and dotted with mill villages, and the Piedmont had eclipsed New England as the world’s… Read More
2017-03-21 05:00
There is no more sacred spot in upper South Carolina than the Old Stone Church and its adjoining cemetery, where many of South Carolina’s most distinguished dead lie sleeping. The old… Read More
2017-03-17 01:00
May the rains sweep gentle across your fields,
May the sun warm the land,
May every good seed you have planted bear fruit,
And late summer find you standing in fields of plenty.
The post Ha… Read More
2017-03-16 05:00
Jane Gentry — piano teacher, Appalachian folk-music historian, weaver — was an inspiration for the movie Songcatcher.
She was born Jane Hicks in 1863, the first child of Ransom a… Read More
2017-03-14 05:00
March 14, 1913 (portion)
Our state, situated as it is in one of the richest mineral zones in the world – outside of the precious mineral class – contains more bituminous coal tha… Read More
2017-03-13 05:00
Napoleon Hill’s book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ is the all time bestseller in the success motivation field, with over 100 million copies sold around the world.
Napoleon Hill was… Read More
2017-03-10 05:00
“The Great Train Robbery” of the B&O railroad made headlines worldwide on March 10, 1949. The event was reminiscent of Wild West days, and it seized the imagination of report… Read More
2017-03-09 05:00
“The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is an independent public corporation founded by Congress in 1933 to control flooding, improve navigation, assist farmers, provide cheap electric p… Read More
2017-03-08 05:00
“Curt Jett was a member of the Hargis clan in the Hargis-Cockrill feud. Once he was under sentence of death, but the Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed the verdict and he accepted a li… Read More
2017-03-07 05:00
One day in the old times when we could still talk with other creatures, while some children were playing about the house, their mother inside heard them scream. Running out she found that a… Read More
2017-03-06 05:00
On October 1, 1755, while returning home from Fort Cumberland [MD] Trading Post several miles away, white settler Jane Frazier was captured by Miami Indian warriors and taken to the Miami Ri… Read More
2017-03-03 05:00
“We didn’t even know what a union was. We’d never heard tell of a union. But we just decided that we wasn’t going to work for this wage. We just wasn’t going to… Read More
2017-03-02 05:00
There died in Logan County, in June, 1885, Christopher Stahley, aged 104 years and 10 months. He was a last survivor of the Grand Army of Napoleon; a native of Alsace; a typical veteran of t… Read More
2017-03-01 05:00
Nancy Green (1834-1923), a former slave from Mt. Sterling, KY, moved to Chicago after the Civil War, where she went on to become one of the first African American models employed by an Ameri… Read More
2017-02-28 05:00
With all the early blooming we’ve seen this year, it’ll soon be time to think about putting in the hardy plants like kale or spinach. When’s the best time to plant and… Read More
2017-02-27 05:00
In celebration of the heroes of the Underground Railroad, Ohio Memory and the Ohio Historical Society are providing free digital access to the internationally-acclaimed Wilbur H. Sieber… Read More
2017-02-24 05:00
History helps us learn more about who we are. When we do not know our own history, however, our power and dreams can be hindered. The contributions and accomplishments of women have often be… Read More
2017-02-23 05:00
[Walter] Sanders Russell (1900-1982), was born in Stevenson, Alabama. Sanders began harness racing while still in high school and won his first race in 1915. The U.S. Trotting Association&rs&hell…Read More
2017-02-22 05:00
Mary Harris Jones (1837-1930), better known as Mother Jones, was an American labor organizer and one of the founders of the Social Democratic party (1898) and the Industrial Workers of the W… Read More
2017-02-21 05:00
Those who never lived in a mountainous country are often surprised at the sight of what we call sleds, slides or sledges, made of the bodies of small trees with crooked ends, turning upward… Read More
2017-02-20 05:00
Hang down your head Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die.
It’s the most famous murder ballad in American folk music… Read More
2017-02-17 05:00
If you’ve taken part in a shivaree and played post office and spin-the-bottle, chances are you’ve been around a half-century or more.
In fact, you’ve been around so long th… Read More
2017-02-16 05:00
Micajah Clark Dyer (1822-1891) filed patent 154,654 for his ‘Apparatus for navigating the air’ in 1874, a full 29 years before the Wright brothers made their historic first fligh… Read More
2017-02-15 05:00
In the decade after the Civil War the new Air Line Railroad connecting Charlotte and Atlanta was laid through upcountry South Carolina. Two Confederate veterans saw an opportunity to create… Read More
2017-02-14 05:00
It’s Valentine’s Day. We know lovers everywhere are preoccupied, but what about everyone else? Here’s a day in the life as reported in the February 14, 1930 edition of the… Read More
2017-02-13 05:00
Black Mountain, near the town of Lynch in Harlan County, is Kentucky’s highest point, rising 4125 feet above sea level. It runs along the border of Harlan and Letcher counties, and als… Read More
2017-02-10 05:00
In 1889, William West Skiles described a North Carolina location “entirely shut in by forest-clad mountains.” The area “was watered by three small, limpid streams, two of t… Read More
2017-02-09 05:00
“Sugar making time was looked forward to with pleasant anticipation by the young people,” writes George Benson Kuykendall in a family geneaology published in 1919. His uncle, Isa… Read More
2017-02-08 05:00
“Why–it’s taken for granted that women are gossips by nature, by instinct and by training,” said the Sparrow.
“Women ought to deny that charge every time they h… Read More
2017-02-07 05:00
“We go to bed at night and get up in the morning, and our Milk Bottles are standing on the back porch waiting for us,” observed Rev. W.L. Stidger in a sermon titled ‘Milk B… Read More
2017-02-06 05:00
By 1937, when “Drug Czar” Harry Anslinger, then Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, introduced the Marihuana [sic] Tax Act to Congress, lurid testimonies were being… Read More
2017-02-03 05:00
Middlesboro Daily News
Middlesboro, KY
Feb. 5, 1921
There are some persons who are emotional to such an extent that they completely lose control of themselves and let their emotions swa… Read More
2017-02-02 05:00
February is Black History Month (if you’re in the UK and reading this, make that October!). West Virginia educator Carter G. Woodson, the son of former slaves, was pivotal in its devel… Read More
2017-02-01 05:00
When the mountain girl marries and responsibility is put upon her, she thriftily adapts herself to conditions. A young girl of sixteen who was about to marry was looking at my wedding ring o… Read More
2017-01-31 05:00
Arizona Houston Hughes (1876-1969) taught elementary school in Avery County, NC for 57 years. In 1953 she was honored by the state, receiving the North Carolina Teacher of the Year award at… Read More
2017-01-30 05:00
Floyd Collins was first to explore Sand Cave. Fallen rock trapped him in narrow passage 150 ft. from entrance, Jan. 30, 1925. Rescuers reached him with food and heat for short time. Aid cut… Read More
2017-01-27 05:00
Clarkesville, GA has always had a great attraction for all sorts of cranks and oddities, who have drifted here from every quarter, besides having her fair share of the same sort of native pr… Read More
2017-01-26 05:00
Geologists estimate that the rock over which the Cumberland River plunges is about 250 million years old. The falls is 65 feet high and is 125 feet wide. When the Cumberland River is at floo… Read More
2017-01-25 05:00
My neighbor across the creek is already up and busy with his saw and hammer, despite it being Sunday, despite his having worked in the mines all the other six days of the week, often in wate… Read More
2017-01-24 05:00
January 25 marks the 255rd birthday of poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), who continues to be widely loved in the Scots-Irish community. Many of the bard’s songs and poems have become inte… Read More
2017-01-23 05:00
Her provocative pin-up images violated all manner of the era’s sexual taboos, finally invoking a United States Senate Committee investigation into pornography. In 1955, Bettie Page was… Read More
2017-01-20 05:00
“I like to garden and travel . . . I’m an outdoors person,” says Lura Stanley. “And so I don’t quilt in the summertime. Winter, when you have to stay in, when t… Read More
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